Microsoft’s Tablet Surfaces Again

A year ago, Microsoft did something it never had done before: it built and sold a computer. Called Surface, it was designed to be an “extension of Windows.” The device was innovative—existing somewhere between a tablet and a laptop—but largely ignored. Yet on Monday afternoon, Microsoft announced its successors, the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, which it calls the “most productive tablets on the planet.”

After losing nine hundred million dollars on its previous effort, it might seem strange that the most successful software company in the world keeps making hardware. In addition to the two new versions unveiled yesterday, Panos Panay, Microsoft’s vice president for Surface, mentioned that at least three future generations of the device are in the works; the Surface effort, which once occupied just a dozen employees, now consumes nearly an entire building on Microsoft’s campus. Microsoft also recently purchased Nokia’s phone business for just over seven billion dollars. It is now fully invested in the business of building computers and the software and services that power them, for better or worse. People want technology that “just works,” to use the popular coinage, and history suggests that crafting complete products and ecosystems, from end to end, is perhaps the only way to do so. Make the hardware; make the software; make it work.

The new Surface devices are technical masterpieces, from a hardware perspective: the Pro 2, a half-inch-thick wedge of black magnesium alloy, was demonstrated easily manipulating raw 6K footage, which has six times the resolution of standard high-definition video. The devices’ signature covers, with their built-in keyboards, have only grown more precise and more capable. And, of course, they have the requisite complement of impressive-sounding numbers, like forty-six per cent better color accuracy, twenty per cent better performance, and seventy per cent more battery life. But it is generally agreed that the failure of the original Surface stemmed from its confusing messaging and software, and it’s not clear if those issues have been remedied completely.

Microsoft is once again selling two similar-sounding products with vastly differing capabilities: the nine-hundred-dollar Surface Pro 2 uses a full version of Windows 8.1, which can run any Windows application, while the four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Surface 2 has Windows RT 8.1, a tablet-based operating system that can only support apps designed specifically for it. A year after the launch of Windows 8, however, browsing the Windows Store for apps feels like tiptoeing through the ruins of an abandoned mall. There isn’t, for example, a full version of Adobe Photoshop, which means that purchasers of the regular Surface 2 will be potentially left thinking about all of the things they can’t do. Often, even if an essential app is in the store, it feels like the ghost of an afterthought; it would be surprising to learn that Twitter has more than a single engineer dedicated to its anemic Windows 8 app. This is not a trivial issue for Microsoft: a software platform is only as a healthy as its app ecosystem. When one considers the even sadder state of the Windows Phone Store, which opened in 2010 and still lacks even Instagram, the situation seems only grimmer. (The most frustrating thing for Microsoft must be that its cloud services are generally superior to Apple’s, while its hardware often has proved to be superior to Google’s, and yet its mobile products remain woefully behind both in sales and in reputation.)

That said, one of the bright spots for the new Surfaces, at least in terms of Microsoft’s need to woo developers who will build applications, is, perhaps incongruously, the hardware: the tablets are supremely modular. Microsoft demonstrated a new docking station that effectively transforms the Pro 2 into a traditional PC—and it seems to actually work, unlike previous attempts to build such a device. It also unveiled the Surface music kit, which is built on a custom touch cover that features buttons and gesture areas specifically designed for d.j.ing software. Microsoft plans, over time, to allow third parties to develop other covers for specialized applications. It is perhaps the most literally transformative aspect of the new Surface: it extends the blank slate of a multitouch tablet from one surface into two, radically expanding its possibilities.

Perhaps what works most in Surface’s favor is its part in a company that is willing to pursue projects it believes are worthwhile—even when there is no immediate payoff in sight, and even at the cost of billions. Microsoft has shown this faith in its products both online, with Bing, and in the living room, with Xbox. And it would be hard to imagine a more worthwhile investment for Microsoft than establishing its place in the future of computers themselves.

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